Page 243
“Sleep,” I tell her.
“You sleep.”
“I will.”
“You first.”
“That is not how sleep works.”
“It can if we’re stubborn enough.”
I pull the blanket around her shoulders. “We will sleep at the same time.”
“Fine. But if you have a medical crisis, wake me.”
“I will try to schedule it after breakfast.”
“Very funny.”
“I learned from you.”
She smiles against my shoulder, and within minutes her breathing evens out.
I remain awake longer, not from vigilance alone but from wonder. The room is quiet. The stars beyond the viewport burn without guidance. The universe began without us in mind, and yet Anita sleeps beside me, trusting me with her softness, her fear, her future.
No fate could make that less miraculous.
I close my eyes with her hand still resting over my hearts, and peace, strange and self-made, settles around us like a promise we have chosen to keep.
CHAPTER 35
ANITA
The authorization hearing takes place in a room designed by people who believe anxiety can be neutralized with pale wood, soft lighting, and chairs expensive enough to qualify as diplomatic concessions.
It does not work.
The air has the distinct aroma of polished resin, warm circuitry, recycled oxygen, and the bitter coffee I have been drinking since dawn because sleep and I are currently engaged in a lengthy professional disagreement. Sunlight from the station’s artificial day-cycle spills through high windows along one wall, clean and golden and absurdly civilized, touching the glossy table, the stacked review files, the water glasses nobody has touched, and the sealed containment case sitting three seats away under enough security fields to make it look like a small, badly behaved moon. Every few minutes, the fields emit a faint blue shimmer and a soft electrical tick that makes half the officials glance toward it as if the shard might leap up and start making policy suggestions.
Honestly, given the past few weeks, I understand the concern.
I sit at the table with my hands folded around a compad full of notes I have rewritten seventeen times and still hate. Sira sits to my left in pale silver robes, calm enough to look serene if someone does not know her well enough to notice the tension in her fingertips. Brakk slouches on my right in a formal vest he claims is strangling him, though I have personally watched him crawl through a conduit half his size while insulting the concept of architecture. Ghar stands behind us near the wall, officially present as security consultant and unofficially present as the reason I have not climbed onto the table and started throwing water glasses at bureaucrats.
The review board has fifteen members.
That is too many people for wisdom and too few for adequate blame distribution.
Director Halvek sits across from me, still gaunt from the aftermath but sharper than most of the League officials around her. Merrow sits two chairs to her right, because apparently no amount of planetary collapse is sufficient to dislodge him from the narrative. Alliance, Coalition, Pi’Rell, independent human, and neutral academic representatives fill the rest of the table, each carrying their own fears, agendas, and diplomatic vocabulary for mistrust.
Halvek looks down at the authorization packet. “Doctoral Candidate Prentiss, your proposal requests formation of a new exploratory initiative under provisional multi-polity oversight.”
“Yes.”
“You are requesting leadership authority.”
“Shared leadership authority,” I say. “Scientific operations under my direction, philosophical and linguistic risk assessment under Specialist Sira-Vel, technical recovery and field engineering under Brakk of Fratvoya, and security oversight under Ghar Vek’Talan.”
Brakk lifts one hand without sitting up. “For the record, I am only here for the pay.”
